A Really Greater New York. That was the title of the 1911 proposal by an engineer and planner who imagined paving over massive amounts of New York Harbor to make room to build the New York of the future.

Stephen Mihm, an associate professor of history at the University of Georgia, is a contributor to the Ticker. Follow him on TwitterAh, the “hyperloop.” Elon Musk, whose track record as a technological visionary is unimpeachable, has released details of his plan for a futuristic system of transport. The basic idea is to use air pressure to shoot people-carrying pods through tubes at speeds of up to 760 miles per hour.With all due respect to Mr. Musk, the idea isn’t new. This has been pointed out by some commentators, who have noted that in 1972 Rand Corporation researcher R. M. Salter released a proposal to ferry passengers from New York to Los Angles in a mere 21 minutes, or 14 minutes less than the hyperloop would take to send them from Los Angeles to San Francisco. But at its heart, Musk’s project is even more old school: It owes most of its inspiration to ideas that have been around for two hundred years.

LITTLE FALLS, N.Y. — State parks officials and history buffs will gather at a historic site in the Mohawk Valley to mark the 100th anniversary of the property's acquisition by New York.Sunday afternoon's event is being held at the Herkimer Home State Historic site in Little Falls, 60 miles west of Albany.Gen. Nicholas Herkimer completed construction of his Georgian-style mansion after the French and Indian War ended in 1763, when the Mohawk Valley was New York's frontier. During the Revolutionary War, in August 1777, Herkimer was leading hundreds of American militiamen en route to relieve the siege at Fort Stanwix in present-day Rome when they were ambushed at Oriskany by a force British, loyalist and Indians....

NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y. — The way Moises Valencia describes things, it began with a simple idea.Seeing that the American flag flying outside the old military armory in the city needed replacing, he took it upon himself to contact local veterans about putting up a new one. For good measure, he shelled out about $16 online for a yellow Gadsden flag, bearing an image that dates back to 1775, of a coiled rattlesnake and the words “Don’t Tread on Me,” in case the veterans wanted to use that one, too.The way city officials see things, a group whose agendas go beyond purely patriotic ones decided to use a public space, the flagpole at the city-owned armory, to fly a banner that has come to symbolize the Tea Party and antipathy to government....

by Bruce Chadwick

Tellin’ Man Midtown International Theater Festival Dorothy Strelsin Theater 312 W. 36th Street New York, N.Y. Each summer, the festival stages fifty or so plays of different varieties at the midtown theater complex.There were five well known slave revolts in America prior to the Civil War: in New York in 1712, along the Stono River, in South Carolina, in 1740, in Richmond, Virginia in 1800, the Denmark Vesey revolt in Charleston in 1822 and the Nat Turner revolt in Virginia in 1831. Paul Gray’s new play, Tellin’ Man seems to be based most closely on the rebellion led by Gabriel Prosser in Richmond, Virginia, in 1800. In Gray’s play, as in the Prosser revolt, other slaves secretly told the owners of the rebellion and the slave owners worked with law enforcement to quash it.The Tellin’ Man is the story of James, who betrayed his fellow slaves, and what happened to him, his family and his friends after the leaders of the revolt were arrested. It is a narrow focus play about slavery and the eternal hope of those in bondage that they could be free.